1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a supply control system and a method of supplying a lot and a mask to a photo device.
2. Related Art
Generally, a photo device used for semiconductor fabrication and the like is made up of a coater for coating a chemical agent and the like on a wafer and the like, an exposure device to perform predefined patterning on the wafer by using a mask (also referred to as reticule), and a developer to perform development. Also, the photo device has a baking unit to perform baking as necessary.
When producing many kinds of products such as in semiconductor fabrication, exposure is conducted in tune with each process of each lot consisting of the same kind of wafer, so that many kinds of masks are used. Consequently, it is technically difficult to automatically supply masks per lot to the photo device. Therefore, a conventional method was to manually supply masks to the photo device.
To solve such problem, there is described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-163094 describes conveying a reticule case via an unmanned conveying robot from a reticule stocker to a reticule receiving position of the photo device.
However, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-163094, there are disclosed only techniques regarding reticule position, while there is no disclosure of techniques to supply proper reticules in accordance with many kinds of lots.
Consequently, according to the manual method or the method of Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-163094, for example, when supplying a reticule from the external reticule stocker while the maximum permissible number of reticules are available in a reticule library in the photo device, there is difficulty in determining which reticule to take out or to supply a proper reticule if there is a different combination of a lot and a reticule each time.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problem. It is an object thereof to provide a supply control system and a method, a program, and an information storage medium, which can properly control supply of a lot and a mask to the photo device.